Many Internet users participate in online communities. Online community members maintain profiles, in which they post information about themselves. Many users define multiple online communities via multiple sites, such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, employee directories, IM buddy lists, etc. Different communities are defined for different purposes: interacting with close friends, business associates, long distance acquaintances, co-workers, etc. In order to participate in multiple communities, a user is expected to setup a profile on each site, which typically involves reentering the same personal information. Additionally, the user is expected to define a separate community specific to each service, which often involves overlap with other existing communities. Each time the user decides to participate in a new community based service, the user must again input profile data and define a community.
For example, a user might keep in contact with friends on FaceBook, MySpace, and Plaxo. To do so, the user would need to set up a separate profile and create a separate community on each of these sites. In order to use the career networking features on LinkedIn, the same user would need to create a new profile and community on that web site. Each of the user's friends on FaceBook, MySpace, and Plaxo would also need to join LinkedIn in order to be part of this career networking community.
As more and more community services are provided online, users will likely create many small targeted communities each including relevant people from across multiple communities for specific purposes: looking for a job, a new hire, a romantic relationship, a tenant, etc. Additionally, as more personal data is stored online, users will want to create specific, targeted communities that can or cannot view specific user data: the user's current geographic location, children's photos, financial data, medical data, etc. Manually entering a new profile and creating and maintaining a new community for each purpose would be very time-intensive and prone to error. It would also potentially require that a user gather given community members at yet another site before using a new service. It would be desirable to address these shortcomings.